Achieve your dream: Fly to all 30 MLB ballparks

Is there a baseball fan alive who doesn’t want to visit all 30 Major League ballparks? I doubt it.

This morning I read in The New York Times about Hopper, an intriguing new site that allows travelers to research optimum times to fly from Point A to Point B (and Point C, and Point D, etc.). Read the Times story for the details and caveats, but go straight to the Hopper research page
to learn how you can fly to all 30 MLB cities for a lot less than I imagined.

Hopper lets you plug in the airport of your choice and determines the cheapest or shortest route from there. I chose Philadelphia International and was surprised to learn that, in theory anyway, I could fly the route on the map above for $2,471.

Meshing all those discounted flights with the MLB schedule would be a colossal challenge. But it’s fun to dream.

This would be great, but I think a combination of driving and flights with a rental car is the best option. You can probably cut your price about 75% if you drive to all the stadiums within 5 hours of each other and also see some great sites along the way. Last summer I did a Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland to Cincy trip over a 5 day swing, while visiting Columbus, OH on the “off day”, it was a great adventure.

When you do these “mini trips” find the one with the cheapest flight on the last day of your trip and schedule it around that, it could save you a few hundred dollars.